Death is a funny thing. We spend most of lives trying to ignore it or numb ourselves to it, while it waits patiently just around the corner.
I usually pride myself on exploring every little dark crevice of humanity; gazing with unblinking eyes directly into the unknown, but this Death is terrifying.
Oh, it's easy to run down a list of facts about death and to understand it in theoretical sense, but to come face to face with it is something that can't be prepared for.
(These words are a paltry substitute for the visceral understanding that descending upon me without warning, but they will have to do.)
The other night, while sitting alone on my couch, I got to thinking about death. At first my thoughts were more like "Death Theory." Like Music Theory, it will give you a technical understanding of Death but cant give you a visceral understanding of it.
Then, without warning, Death smashed through my world and brought everything to a standstill. I was standing alone in the void, confronted directly with one of the most terrifying prospects imaginable.
This life will soon end, and when it does this thing called "Me" will cease to exist." The world will not keep spinning with me watching in the bleachers. Everything that is Me will vanish, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. The clock keeps ticking.
I felt the cold icy fingers of Death wrap around my head and I started to freak out. For a few terrifying moments I wondered if someone slipped some drugs into the food I had just ate.
The world was collapsing around me and the only thing left was the void, an inescapable and infinitely deep void.
I turned on the TV to try to keep the thoughts from overwhelming me. The peak of the experience eventually faded. What didn't fade, however, was the shattered world all around me.
Absolutely everything around me was infinitely trivial. I knew that it was all just a light coat of paint, barely covering the void beneath it.
This thing called Death is all around us, just beneath the surface, and while we do our best to ignore it, it waits patiently for us.
And if we were to lean on the world with just a little bit too much force, it will all come crashing down.
How can we prepare ourselves for such a visceral encounter with our own mortality?
And what does it mean?
I usually pride myself on exploring every little dark crevice of humanity; gazing with unblinking eyes directly into the unknown, but this Death is terrifying.
Oh, it's easy to run down a list of facts about death and to understand it in theoretical sense, but to come face to face with it is something that can't be prepared for.
(These words are a paltry substitute for the visceral understanding that descending upon me without warning, but they will have to do.)
The other night, while sitting alone on my couch, I got to thinking about death. At first my thoughts were more like "Death Theory." Like Music Theory, it will give you a technical understanding of Death but cant give you a visceral understanding of it.
Then, without warning, Death smashed through my world and brought everything to a standstill. I was standing alone in the void, confronted directly with one of the most terrifying prospects imaginable.
This life will soon end, and when it does this thing called "Me" will cease to exist." The world will not keep spinning with me watching in the bleachers. Everything that is Me will vanish, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. The clock keeps ticking.
I felt the cold icy fingers of Death wrap around my head and I started to freak out. For a few terrifying moments I wondered if someone slipped some drugs into the food I had just ate.
The world was collapsing around me and the only thing left was the void, an inescapable and infinitely deep void.
I turned on the TV to try to keep the thoughts from overwhelming me. The peak of the experience eventually faded. What didn't fade, however, was the shattered world all around me.
Absolutely everything around me was infinitely trivial. I knew that it was all just a light coat of paint, barely covering the void beneath it.
This thing called Death is all around us, just beneath the surface, and while we do our best to ignore it, it waits patiently for us.
And if we were to lean on the world with just a little bit too much force, it will all come crashing down.
How can we prepare ourselves for such a visceral encounter with our own mortality?
And what does it mean?